Tech: bed/bedstrip/bedside bolts

[jonzcustomshop]

I recently removed 2 beds, and 4 bedsides.
If you have ever done this, it can be real tough.
All the bolts have a round head , and usually are rusted or the wood is rotten, so they just spin.
To make matters worse, they are up inside the cross rails, so it is difficult to cut them off.
After hours of cutting, grinding, torching, vice grips, and bolt cutters, I got all my stuff apart.

It was only after doing all this that I had a great idea that I will use whenever possible from now on.

I wirebrush / sand the heads of all the bolts
I stopped by the hardware store and got a bag of nuts.
They are just big enough to sit on top of the bed bolts.
Then I weld the nut to the top of the bolt.( I got bigger nuts, so you can weld a bead down inside the nut)

This helps out in two ways. 1- the heat from the weld helps loosen up the bolt. 2- now you have a nut that you can get a wrench to the top of the bolt.

Now you can go through and unbolt all the bed hardware, without worrying about damaging the parts with a torch or cutoff wheel.

I hope this helps some of you!

[ChiefRocka]

Good idea....I weld nuts to crap all the time to remove stripped/rusty fasteners.

Also what if you just cut a slot in the head with a cut-off, then use a big pry-bar type screw-driver to hold the bolt....might work with two people.

[63 & 64 Bowties]

Great idea. Thanks for the tip.
When I removed all the bed wood bolts from my 64, they were so rusty that they were actually only a little bit thicker than a pencil lead where they went thru the wood, so all it took was a pair of vise grips and a ratchet, and they twisted right off.

[MikeN]

When I replaced the wood in the bed of my 64, my brother-in-law pried the heads of the bolts up with a screwdriver, using the side of the strips for leverage, and then grabbed the head with visegrips. I was under the truck zipping the bolts off with air ratchet and impact wrench. It only took a few hours to finish.

[slorio]

My bed wood was so rotten that I pulled it out in chunks by hand. This left enough of the bed strip bolts exposed that I could use a pair of bolt cutters on. After snipping away, I had all of the bolts out in a few minutes.
Regards,
Steve
New Orleans.

[62 short step]

Cool tip!!

[TR65]

Great Tip!!

I had to grind out a steel plate that had been welded on top of the wood bed. That was bad enough. I got that out and thought I was done. Then I had to grind, torch, drill, bolt cut all the 1/4 inch bolts out, not a single nut worked. I wish I had your tip then. Interestingly the 8 bolts that hold the bed on we basically finger tight and came right off. Go figure.

TR